There’s a whoosh like a breeze and flames lick in a straightline along the waterfront, engulfing the Guardian in a blazing cloud of orange. He doesn’t even have time to scream before he’s dead. I drop to the ground, trying to hold in my gasp. I feel my muscles tense with terror – I want to run but I don’t dare. The other Guardian stares at the Bolgorith for a second, then turns and flees. A low growl emanates from the dragon’s chest as he turns to stare across the Thames. He walks past me, his long, spiked tail dragging up dust, and I catch the acidic scent of burning meat. I don’t move, my knees damp from the grass, as I wait for my heartbeat to slow. Then I get shakily to my feet and run the rest of the way, trying not to think of who might be watching me from the sky. Are the Bolgoriths above Wyvernmire’s own army now that Goranov is Dragon Chief of State?
Sweet Street is empty, but I still wince as I push open the heavy iron door to the sugar house, its screeching even louder in the silence. I climb up the metal staircases of one of London’s oldest factories and into a huge derelict space. Then I fumble in the dark for a match and light the lantern I keep hanging on a broken nail in the wall. An orange glow fills the dark, illuminating splintered floorboards and beams that cross each other above me. The smell of smoke and sugar syrup and something else mingle in the air and I’m suddenly aware of the champagne swishing in my stomach. I hear a crunching sound.
‘I’m home,’ I call out, shrugging off my coat.
The floor shakes and dust falls from the rafters as a huge shape emerges from behind a rusting, ten-foot sugar tank.
My roommate.
Chumana.
IN DEFENCE OF WYRMERIAN
It befalls to us now to approach the unlikeliest of vernaculars, one it never occurred to us to defend due to its status as Britannia’s national dragon tongue and its assured place as the Draconic twin to the language of Shakespeare . . . WYRMERIAN.
And yet, since the Prime Minister mandated that only English is permitted when speaking with dragons – and since the mass departure of dragons from the nation’s capital – Wyrmerian is barely more than a whisper on the wind. It is a ghost language destined, if we cannot free ourselves from the ignorant rulership of Adrienne Wyvernmire, to be interred in the same graveyard as Sanskrit or Aramaic, or to become what scholars call a classical language; a museum trophy, admired and studied alongside Latin and Ancient Greek, but nonetheless returned to its display case at the end of the day, never to be spoken aloud.
Part of the North Sea Germanic branch of languages that includes Old English – languages which are therefore older than our modern English itself – Wyrmerian is not merely the dragon tongue of Britannia but its beating, Dragonese heart. Wyrmerian is the language of negotiation and commerce at the Royal Victoria Docks. It is the language of British aviation, the Wyrmerian word finn – used to designate the flight feathers of a dragon’s tail – having been borrowed by the English language to specify a part of an aircraft’s empennage. It is the tongue spoken by Queen Beatrice’s Royal Dragon Advisor (who resigned upon the breakingof the Peace Agreement). It is the lullaby once whispered to the Western Drake dragonlings that used to nest along the Thames, back when dragons were respected members of British society. These dragonlings were referred to as fersc, the word for new in Wyrmerian. It designates newness in a way that only babies can be new, and was borrowed from Old English, where it meant fresh and pure.
But there is no place for such purity, such innocence, in Wyvernmire’s Britannia. Not while it is home to species segregation, class inequalities and crimes against dragons.
Will you, the British people, stand by and watch the annihilation of our most refined dragon tongue, the forefather of Britannia’s Dragonese? Or will you, in the name of patriotism and language preservation, rebel?
CHUMANA’S STRAWBERRY SCALES SHINE IN THE lamplight, slick with a natural oil that protects the skin beneath from their rough edges. The sores that used to run up her legs, the result of years spent locked inside a dark library, are gone and her teeth are coated in blood. When I told Hollingsworth I wanted to live somewhere far from the First Class luxuries that reminded me of Bletchley Park, she insisted it be with Chumana. My eyes dart to the carcass of a young stag behind the pink dragon and my stomach lurches. So that’s what the smell is.
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Bon appétit.’
Chumana watches as I head to the makeshift parlour area in the corner of the warehouse and change into a nightdress. A wet wind blows in from the river, straight through the missing wall at the far end of the room. It was smashed away during a rebel attack before we moved in. We can’t block it up because it’s the only entrance to the building Chumana canfit through. A small fire burns within a metal barrel. I watch out of the corner of my eye as Chumana returns to her prey, holding it steady by an antler as she peels off strips of meat with her teeth. The scent of warm blood is overpowering. I pour myself a glass of water from the jug and sit down amid a pile of blankets to watch the Bulgarian dragon I live with crunch the stag’s skull between her jaws.
‘Chumana,’ I say.
She stops chewing, blood trickling down her chin as her eyes flick lazily to me.
‘Wyvernmire has appointed General Goranov as Dragon Chief of State.’
A low growl emanates from her throat. ‘I know.’
My heart sinks. Of course she does.
So why am I the only one who didn’t?
‘Why would she do such a thing?’
Chumana licks her lips. ‘She believes it will make her powerful on the world stage, to have a Bulgarian Bolgorith at her side.’
‘And will it?’
‘It will make her a threat,’ she breathes. ‘Britannia will be hated for allying with Bulgaria, but it will also be feared.’
‘She’s also made Slavidraneishá the country’s national dragon tongue,’ I say as Chumana eats.
‘Are you surprised?’
‘So British dragons cannot speak their own tongues, but the Bulgarian invaders can?’
A bone cracks loudly between Chumana’s teeth. ‘Wyvernmire will do whatever is necessary to keep control,’she hisses. ‘Since she betrayed Queen Ignacia, no British dragon is required to be loyal to her. Ignacia may be refusing to ally with the rebels, but she still wants revenge against the government. As for the humans, the lower classes are joining the rebellion and the First Class is beginning to question her, too.’
‘That’s why she has Hollingsworth writing the Babel Decree articles,’ I say bitterly. ‘She wants to know what everyone is saying at all times.’
